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Dell Service Offers New Private Cloud Capabilities

Dell Cloud Dedicated services gives businesses access to servers and other infrastructure in a Dell data center to create a managed private cloud.

Dell is offering a service that will enable businesses to leverage servers and other infrastructure in a Dell data center to create their own private clouds.

Through Dell's Cloud Dedicated Services, businesses would get access to all the technology they need-from servers and storage to networking and managed services options-to deploy a managed private cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) from one of Dell's data centers.

Through the managed private cloud, companies would get the benefits they can find in public clouds-from self-service access and rapid scalability and to metered usage-while having the security they would get from private clouds to meet the requirements that come with sensitive and highly regulated data, according to Dell officials.

The new Dedicated Cloud Services, announced Aug. 23, is part of a larger aggressive push by the vendor to offer businesses a wide range of cloud services, giving them a host of options depending on their needs. Dell executives in April 2011 announced the company would invest $1 billion in its data centers to expand its cloud, virtualization and converged infrastructure efforts. The plan includes building 10 new data centers worldwide-including in the United States, Asia and Europe-that would offer businesses private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

Further reading

The money also will be used to open almost two-dozen Global Solutions Centers to enable customers to learn about Dell products and to work with Dell experts.

"We continue to expand our cloud offerings and availability to help make sure that regardless of a customer's requirements, Dell's cloud services can meet their needs today and help them plan for the future," Nnamdi Orakwue, vice president for infrastructure cloud services at Dell, said in a statement about the launch of Dell Cloud Dedicated services. "As part of Dell's continuing efforts to build, operate, connect, deliver and simplify cloud solutions for customers, we are making it easy for customers to access and adopt cloud solutions, and taking a big step into the private cloud space with Dell Cloud Dedicated."

It's no surprise that Dell and other IT vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard, continue to open up their own data center infrastructures to offer cloud services to customers. IDC analysts last year said that spending on cloud services will grow from $21.5 billion in 2010 to $72.9 billion by 2015, and that cloud services will be a key driver behind a larger transformation in computing that fuel growth in the IT industry for the next 25 years.

In addition, cloud services will push strong job growth, according to an IDC study released in March and commissioned by Microsoft.

"IDC estimates that last year alone, IT cloud services helped organizations of all sizes and all vertical sectors around the world generate more than $400 billion in revenue and 1.5 million new jobs," John Gantz wrote in a co-authored IDC white paper. "In the next four years, the number of new jobs will surpass 8.8 million." By 2015, the number will increase still further, to 13.8 million.

According to Dell officials, through the Dell Cloud Dedicated services, businesses are assigned individual servers that are housed in a Dell data center. At the same time, the customers are given a range of options around storage, networking and managed services, and then can run their workloads on these systems.

IaaS gives businesses a secure way to run key workloads that normally would be put on on-premise servers, a move that will save customers money by not having to buy or maintain infrastructure systems and move the management onus off of the businesses and onto Dell. It also will allow customers to quickly and easily deploy workloads, according to Dell officials.

In addition to the managed cloud services, Dell officials are laying out other plans to expand their cloud services offerings. In the next few weeks, the company will roll out the Dell Cloud portal in the United States. The portal will be designed to make it easier for businesses to order and access Dell's cloud services, offering instant online ordering capabilities that will enable customers to quickly deploy their workloads and to scale as needed.

Through the portal, businesses will be able to opt for either preconfigured bundles of infrastructure to meet their computing needs or go the on-demand route for their less-predictable computing workloads.

Also, by September, Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Services, which currently are available in the United States and Canada, will become available in the U.K., France, Ireland and Mexico. Dell also is reaching out to channel partners to help in making its cloud services available. The company recently made Dell cloud services available as part of the company's PartnerDirect Program in the United States and Canada.